Crossing the Mirage: Passing through youth by BS Murthy (classic reads .TXT) 📖

waning. And woman’s attachment to her man deepens with sex though it’s a case of diminishing returns for her body. Oh, how men of lust tend women into sex as men in love long for their heart! It’s the tragedy of woman that if she gives in to the lusting, either she gets jilted to her hurt or lies trapped in a deadlock of wedlock.”

“In that case,” said Sathya in surprise, “with Kala was it not a wild-goose chase for me?”

“Why, you had your chance with her,” said Prema continuing in the same vein. “I’m sure you’d lost her the night you declined her final favor. Had you had her then, I’m sure you would’ve been in the reckoning in the crunch situation. Well, depending on how you appealed to her in bed, you would’ve weighed in her mind. But fortunately for us, it’s a case of two wrongs becoming a right, isn’t it?”

“Maybe, you’re right about her,” said Sathya, tapping her lips. “But what’s the feedback from you?”

“If you haven’t found it cold,” she said leaning onto him, “won’t that answer your question?”

“It’s like I was in a hot chamber.”

“Can’t I count on your coolant to curb its heat?”

“Won’t your charms keep up my supply lines?”

“Here’s my fresh indent,” she pushed her breast into his mouth as a prelude.

In their newfound love, reluctant to part with each other, they slept in each other’s arms at the exhausted end of that night.

 

Chapter 26

Life of a Kind

 

Waking up at eight, Prema sprang to her feet to ring up her friend and as Nithya was waiting for her call, she answered the call by the first ring itself. 

“What a coup in the making!” a joyous Nithya soon appraised Chandra about the development and its import on the final act.

“Don’t get carried away and spill the beans,” Chandra cautioned her. “Let it pass off as a twist of destiny.”

After speaking to Nithya, Prema sat down to draft a new twist to Vasu’s destiny. At length, she went to Sathya only to find him stirring in the bed. When she sat on the bed to wake him up, he pulled her into his arms.

“I wish we begin afresh,” he said winking at her.

“Won’t you help me end this chapter first?” she said smug in his embrace.

“Only as a sequel,” he said squeezing her hip.

At length, as they got up for the day, she went into the kitchen.

“There are things to sort out right away,” said Prema as they had their coffee.

“Assign my duties,” he said, “and the responsibilities.”

“Like Kala before me,” said Prema deliberately, “I want to acquire a fresh wardrobe.”

“You’re welcome.”

“Likewise,” she said, “I want to shed him off all that my father gave us.”

“Why to go to such lengths?” said Sathya a little taken aback.

“Well, it’s my whim?” she said spiritedly.

“But still.”

“Stop being considerate to all and sundry,” she said unrelenting. “Won’t it do that I gift them away to the needy of the neighborhood?”

“It’s a point of view.”

“Let’s put the car on sale,” she said in the same vein. “And donate the proceeds to some orphanage.”

“Rob Peter to pay Paul.”

“Why forget he robbed your honey to butter his bread?”

“I wonder how your parents will react,” he said coming to reality.

“Can’t you imagine?” she told him assuredly. “Don’t you know how they wanted me to be your wife? It would be better late than never for them.”

“What a day it would be!” he said dreamily.

“Our wedding day!” she smiled coyly.

“May that be our own day,” he said taking her into his arms, “for the rest of our life.”

“I wish we will be around,” she said sinking into his embrace, “to celebrate the golden jubilee.”

“Well, the law of averages might help,” he said hopefully, “for the way we have suffered so far.”

“It’s my promise,” she said lovingly. “I will strive to make you happy every day of those fifty years.”

“Are you on the pill or what?” he asked tentatively.

“It didn’t happen that’s all.”

“Hope our aggregate improves,” he crooned into her ear.

 “Am I not desperate to bear your child?” she said happily. “But for now think of the job on hand.”

“You cover the neighborhood and I’ll go round the town,” he said giving her his hand. “Is it okay?”

“Get me light blue lingerie for our first night in your flat,” she said coyly, “that is, after dinner at the Chandras. Well I forgot to tell you that we're invited as a couple.”

“Made for each other I suppose,” he said and added in undertone, “what about the made for you uppers and lowers?”

“Don’t forget to pick up some petticoats as well,” she said aloud after whispering in his ears.

That evening, dumping the purchases at his flat, they set out for dinner at the Honeycomb.

“You're an expert,” said Sathya watching her drive.

“Are you any less,” she said winking at him, “in handling the fair sex.”

“Don't you make much of it?” he said feeling flattered. 

“Oh, how kind is God to us!” she said dreamily. 

“Of the rarest kind, isn’t it?”

“How I felt like praying to God to get you back,” she said nostalgically. “But I didn’t dare after all that.”

“Assuming there is God,” he said philosophically, “He's not amenable to your prayers. I've come to realize that.”

“Have you become an atheist or what!” she said struck by the conviction of his tone.

“As I told you,” he began nostalgically, “I believed Kala was a mislaid jewel to be retrieved with my love, and understandably, I turned to God for help. And for over a year, though the deities differed, my prayer remained the same: oh, God make me the means of her happiness! And how fervently I used to pray! Believe me, my own fulfillment through marriage was never in my mind. Wonder how I could become so selfless in my endeavour! Why, the singularity of the appeal and the constancy of my prayer had to be seen to be believed! It was nothing short of a tapasya.”

“I can see from your face,” she said stopping the car by the roadside as her eyes welled up, “your capacity to love. Why I couldn’t see it then when I snubbed you? Maybe I've    noticed that with my mind's eye, if not why did that look of yours come to solace me ever since?”

“Won’t we make up Prema!” he said wiping her tears.

“Now that God has willed it,” she said, “I know we will.”

“Well,” he said stoically, “when I failed with Kala, it made me introspect about the power of prayer over the will of God. Could there have been a more worthy cause and a selfless prayer than mine? Yet, why did God dispose of my proposal! For all I know, God is but a myth and even if there is one I've realized, he would only grant that which He thinks fit and not what we might pray for. Any way you look at it, we can’t bend His will through prayer and if there is none, well, it's a waste of time.”

“Maybe your theory,” she said as she steered the car back on to the road, “leaves no scope for anything contrary.”

“It was then I turned to the Bhagavad Gita only to find it was all there in it to the last detail,” he said in apparent admiration for it and added, “It’s the tragedy of man that he doesn’t benefit from the existing wisdom.”

“How true,” she said, “but do tell me about life in Calcutta.”

“I don’t know why,” he began reminiscently, “but the Howrah Bridge always fascinated me ever since I’d seen it in the title movie starring Madhubala. It’s a different matter that her love story is no less fascinating than her persona, and her life as poignant as her death, at only thirty-six. You know what a fan of hers I was but you don't know that I mourned her death like a lover, as you know, I was in Ranchi then.”

“I was no less lovelorn then,” she said with a sigh. “Maybe, the saving grace of unrequited love is that it makes a fascinating story. And what an irony that is!”

“True, but our story of rediscovery” he said lovingly, “makes it a fairy tale really.”

“Isn’t it written all over our faces?” she said joyously. “Now continue with your Calcutta.”

“That morning when I first set foot there,” he resumed, “I was awestruck finding the cantilever bridge right across the railway station. As I crossed it in a cab, I was overawed by its awesome grandeur. Many times over, I used to saunter on it only to experience a peculiar sense of solace looking at the Hooghly down below. Come evening and all that would change. The sprawling structure becomes a hindrance to those who have to catch the trains that leave the Howrah station around that time. The traffic jams that stretch up to miles send people in the cabs and cars alike into jitters. But the ingenuity of the coolies provides escape routes for those who’re willing to venture out. With your baggage as head load in their bamboo trays, with you in tow, they meander their way over the bridge to the railway station and imagine boarding the trains that are a heartbeat away from the green signal! But all can’t be lucky, all the time, and the queues of hapless souls who've missed the trains could well be the index of Cal’s chaos.”

“Isn’t it a mirror image of unrequited lovers?” she said reminiscently. “Either way that is.”

“Well, nothing symbolizes Cal better than Kalighat I suppose” he continued with his account of the place. “I haven’t seen a more chaotic place than the Kali temple there that's too small for the furious goddess, with that protruding tongue. Then the ritual of animal sacrifice, before the deity itself, in the precincts of the temple, and bless the goddess, how the leeches of the priests bleed the jostling crowds to the dreg what with heir knack to spot the gullible first-timers bordering on sorcery. By the time you’re through with your perambulations, you find your wallet lighter for the assorted blessings you’ve had from them, at every corner of Her majestic pedestal. When you come out in the end, you would tend to think but for Her divine hand, the edifice of faith would’ve long crumbled at Her shrine itself.”

“Won’t all that give it a torrid look?”

“Well, try worshipping the sedate Kali in Her serene posture at Dakshineswar,” he said, “and you may find you’re far off from the devotional fervor that accounts for the religious faith. I felt if Kalighat is Cal, Belur Mutt across the Hooghly is some other world. That’s not all, thanks to the red light area nearby; devotion and debauchery go hand in hand at Kalighat. Why can’t I be frank with you? I used to go to a joint at the Free School Street for a fling or two, well nothing free about it though, but the schooling was not bad there. I never ventured into Sonagachi, for I heard it was a crowded bazaar but once I felt like trying it out at a Kalighat brothel.”

“Don’t I know,” she said winking at him, “what all you learnt in that Free School Street?”

“Mind you, it’s still it’s a learning curve,” he said in smile, “and as I entered the zone that evening, I found it was all lit up. There were girls all over, decked up in the traditional attire. Though I sauntered up and down, as none came to solicit, I approached the best looking one, only to learn that being Karthika Purnima it was a day of abstinence for them. As bachelors form the bulk of their clientele, seems it was their custom to appease Karthik, the Bachelor God, without any indulgence that day. What an ingenious way to appease the demigod to further their trade.”

“Oh, what to say of customs,” she said in smile, “was it a wild goose chase then?”

“Why, I came across a beautiful transgressor,” he said winking at